Latest Post: Something has to change

Something has to change.

If you always do what you’ve always done…You’ll always get what you’ve always got.

I’ve been drawn away from the garden again, although this time, not to some exotic location, but tied to the computer, typing up a storm for days and weeks on end for a range of exciting time based projects that are a combination of routine and short and long term projects that I’ll be able to tell you about later. I’m almost through this busyness, but the consequences are I haven’t been able to tend to the garden other than a quick glance or to harvest something for dinner. So, the garden, while still seasonally productive – it isn’t quite where I’d like to be and it does bother me.

While I’ve been inside, turning finger tapping on my keyboard into something meaningful, my mind kept drifting out the window and into the garden. I’d be the first to admit this garden, in this location, is a challenge. The wind is often laden with salt and can be so harmful. But when it isn’t windy it is hot and dry and with the water being such a precious resource here it can be difficult to respond when the whole garden gets thirsty seemingly overnight. Not to mention I’m still growing too much for our empty nest, so the garden is unnecessarily bigger than it needs to be. Although it is prudent to grow as much of your edibles as you can in these tough economic times. And we won’t speak of the pest problems that continue to ravish my tomatoes and other crops.

They say the gardener’s shadow is the best fertiliser, but my continued absences from the garden – often in critical windows of time doesn’t help matters, and the garden does suffer without being regularly tended to. Not giving the garden the priority it needs, but instead managing my time around everything else, rather than freely indulging in gardening for pleasure on a daily basis, has highlighted the need for change.

I’ve come to the realisation, with the limitations of time, the environment, my pest problems, and a more accurate reflection of what I want to grow, something has to give. And now is as good a time as any to make some dramatic changes, in the transition between the end of one summer growing season and the start of the preparations for the next. Ordinarily at this stage of the season, I would have already filled pockets across the garden with cool season edibles, in places that aligned with my crop rotation schedule and what was left was filled with cover crops to re-enrich the soil with nutrients lost through growing and harvesting to get the beds ready for a new season.

I haven’t had a chance to do that this season, and I’m acutely aware I’m missing some kind of deadline to do what I’ve always done and feel the fear of missing out, and the window to get it done is closing. However, I haven’t finished with the computer gardening just yet but am close enough that my mind is beginning to flood with ideas for the next project – a major garden overhaul. Besides – if I set aside an area for cool season crops, to be filled with garden centre seedlings, that will be outside the new plan, then it will help with the downsizing I struggle to achieve because I just won’t count that area in my new plans for next spring.

As soon as my schedule becomes clear, most of the summer garden will be ready to clear away leaving a bit of a blank canvas, ready for a fresh start with fresh thinking and a different way of doing what I’ve always done and I’m excited for it.

Come again soon – to join me on this garden makeover journey (once I’ve finished my other stuff)

Sarah the Gardener  : o)